Last week, some ServePath colleagues and I attended the Under the Radar event at the Microsoft Campus in Mountain View, CA. Touted as a “full-day networking and deal-making event,” Under the Radar showcased several hot properties and companies in the social networking and technology sectors.
About Under the Radar
Presenting companies had to be in an “early-stage” development cycle (launched within the year), an actual start-up (not affiliated with an older large company), have a beta (or beyond) product, monetization-ready and with a unique value proposition.
Instead of re-hashing all the companies and their offerings, I thought that I would take a 
different approach to this event summary and offer a bit of insight into what I learned as well as offer some tips and tricks on how to make good use of these types of events. Overall, the event was incredibly well organized and thought through. While it was interesting to learn about these companies, the side meetings and social aspects were and are, in my mind, much more important. Unfortunately, there was not enough time to do meet-and-greets and networking as I and my colleagues found ourselves “late” to many of the sessions because we were having engaging conversations with people next to the food and coffee.
The event was divided into two presentation tracks, each held in different auditoriums. Each track was broken up into 4 presenting companies under specific themes. The companies were given 6 minutes to present their company and offering and then were asked questions by both a panel of distinguished judges and audience members. At the end of each 1:15 minute session, the audience (and the judges) voted on the company that they liked the best (the audience voted via text messaging for real-time results). The results are now posted. The sessions were as follows:
- Business Calls
- Virtualization
- Get Aggregated
- Manage Up
- Happy Customers
- Virtual Worker
- Work Together
- Marketing and Measurement
The Sessions I Saw
Since I couldn’t be in two places at the same time, I can only comment on the sessions that I saw. But a general theme that seemed to link everything together was how business coupled social networking tools and other more traditional business practices into creating unique value propositions.
Virtualization – the common theme for this session was taking the complexity and lack-of-standards out of the equation. It’s pretty obvious that as technology advances, so does the complexity and perplexity that is tied to it. The companies at this session are making inroads on making the process easier and faster. DeviceVM makes the OS as an “instant on” option. Elastra simplifies elastic relational databases and server and software topologies through the use of markup languages. JumpBox takes the pain out of installing and configuring OpenSource applications. And Universant provides an application modeling studio. All under the umbrella of “virtualization,” these companies are aiming to create “containers” common business hurdles.
Bottom line – if you can componentize or compartmentalize a critical business issue, you are well on the way a potentially successful business.
Manage Up – while a bit of a cryptic title, I believe the gist of this session was finding a niche where your product solves a management dilemma. For Act-On Software, enabling on-demand communication and collaboration with your sales and marketing teams is critical. Magento presented a new OpenSource eCommerce platform for managing multiple eCommerce sites from a single administrative node. Mumboe showed how their product took the pain out of organizing and managing legal documents. And NetBooks brought financial and bookkeeping management to a more accessible level within the small business.
Bottom line – be sure you understand core management hurdles and bring a product that reduces the management risk as well as enables the core players to do their job better and more efficiently.
Happy Customers – this session strongly presented how critical customer service and support mechanisms are to the success of your business. Often overlooked or under valued, support can actually help you not only retain your customers, it can have an incredible impact in growing your business. The companies presenting offered innovative approaches to understanding your customers and the pain (or happiness) they are feeling. FeedbackFX provided a visual tool to enable conversation with every single customer. GetSatisfaction showed how a collaborative help network can help companies engage and get value. HiveLive showcased how their enterprise social networking platform allowed users to share anything with anyone in order to create business communities. And SupportSpace demonstrated a “new standard” of outsourced tech support.
Bottom line – to me it was pretty clear that helping the customer now goes well beyond just that. Assisting the customer actually helps your product and company. As the theme of “complexity” in business or technology grows, your customers are going to become more confused and need more help navigating the waters. If you want to start a company, keep that in mind; if you want to start a business around customer service, be sure that you focus beyond just customer service; the space is much more than just that.
Tips and Tricks and How to get the most out of these conferences and events
- At any conference, the best leads and conversations you can have are usually with the person sitting next to you are during the breaks when everyone is mingling. The “lobby” is really the best place!
- VC’s (of which there were many at this conference) are usually only interested in a few key things:
- What place in the market do you fill?
- How are you better than the people already out there doing the same thing?
- How are you going to make money (and make them money)?
- Don’t be afraid to just talk to a stranger, and when you do, open by asking them questions about what they do. Many people just love hearing themselves talk (grin). You will find a time to talk about yourself, don’t worry.
- Cover the event “live.” I was using Twitter through most of the event and within an hour or so, had 6 new Twitter “friends.” I was even able to make contact with one face-to-face (the CEO of eyejot.com). Along those lines, be sure you add some of the judges or presenters to your Twitter account prior to the event, as many of them tweet out their opinions real-time and offer valuable, real-time insight (like Robert Scoble and Rafe Needleman, who I talked with at this conference).
- If you are a provider, attend conferences where your clients are presenting. One of the main reasons I went to Under the Radar was to meet Rashmi Sinha of SlideShare, a customer of ServePath’s.
- Follow up immediately with the people you meet. (I made many new connections on Twitter and subsequently got access to several private betas.)
- Figure out a unique way to make people remember you. Often people meet hundreds of people so make yourself stand out (I wore a red shirt and carried a camera, for example.)
- Attend more events similar to these. You will start to make friends and potentially find shared business practices and even business partnerships. SNAP Summit is a good example of an event coming up that has a similar audience to Under the Radar.
These types of events are very important to getting your company on the map, to find business partners or to simply expand your professional circle of contacts. Attend many and do so frequently.
A few photos from this event have been posted to the ServePath Flickr account.
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